
Class ^S 3537 



Book_ 
OopightN - 



X2x! 



Hog 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



on 



en 

N 




FRONTISPIECE 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



POEMS 



By 

HERMAN SCHEFFAUER 

h 

Author of "Of Both Worlds," etc. 




New York and Washington 

THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1908 



U538ARY of CONGRESS. 
I wo Copies tfecewai 

JUL 9 )a08 

3LASS/4 _AAc, No. 
COPY 



£n LL s 



\°i° 



Copyright, 1908, by 
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 



^ 
*> 



^ 






ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

are due the Fortnightly, Spectator, Macmillan's 
and Clarion of London, and Lippincotfs, New 
York Times Review, the Cosmopolitan, Success 
and various Californian periodicals for permission 
to republish many of these poems. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Proem and Dedication 9 

Man and the Mountains 15 

The Chant of Man and Woman ... 19 

The Fire Funeral 2,2, 

The Song of a Happy Spirit .... 24 

The Symbol in the Cave 2,7 

Atlantis 32 

San Francisco Desolate 34 

O Evanescence! 37 

The Ruined Temple 38 

To the Earth-Daemon 39 

The Rhapsodist 41 

Keats at Winter Sundown . . . . 47 

The Tower Garden 48 

London in Snow 49 

The Sea and the City 51 

The Throne of the Storm .... 52 

The Leper of London 53 

Manhattan 55 

"An Amiable Child" 57 

Beauty Trove 59 

Assault of Silver 62 

Washington Irving 63 

The Looms of Life 64 

Hymn to the Passing Earth .... 74 

The Master of Magnificence . . yy 



CONTENTS (Continued) 



Song of the Sundown 

Vale, California 

The Shadow O'er the City 

London 

To Mimic Poets 

To William Butler Yeats 

Acme ! . 

The Sculptured Indian 
The Paean of the Poppies 
The Sierra Snow-Plant 
The Californian Poppy 
Mary of Milrone 
Heights and Depths 
Architekton 
Friedrich Nietzsche 
Prologue in Heaven 
A Dedication 
The Quest at End 
Bianca 

The Moon Damozel 
Russia Agonized 
Souls of Men Asunder 
How Could Men Hate 
The Iron Virgin 
The Land of Alabaster 
The Forging of the Rings 
The Storm-Night 



Thee, Lucifer? 



PAGE 

79 
81 
82 
8.3 

84 

85 
86 

87 
88 
90 
9i 
93 
100 
100 
101 
102 
104 
104 
106 
108 
no 

115 
117 

12 3 
126 
127 
!35 



PROEM 

AND 

DEDICATION 

TO 

E. D. 

When the harps of a land lie forlorn, 

And the lips of its minstrels are still, 
When the scroll of the poet lies torn. 
And his song wakes an echo of scorn, 

And the laugh of the fool seeks to kill, — 

When the Age's grim armor enthralls 

Our souls in a bondage of things, 
When Mammon squats throned in his halls, 
Fenced by ramparts of ore, and his walls 
Ring with joy of the pczan he sings, — 

When the Fathers' dreams trodden in mire, 

And the Goddess torn into the dust, 
Stamp their shame like a brand of fierce tire 
On our brows, — when the chords of the lyre 
Are corroded and covered with rust, — 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Then the gods from their altars withdraw, — 

Then the tongues of the prophets of doom 
Are laden with dole, and the awe 
That once hallowed the Tablets of Law 
Is harried by thieves to the tomb. 



Then the Engine of Gutenberg pours 

Its baneful reflex of the Time, 
Then the people are smitten with sores, 
And the Dome of the Capitol roars 

With the shouts of the Caesars of Crime. 



Then women alone feed the flame 

That grows dim on the altar of Art, 
Then do men, unashamed in their shame, 
Make a traffic of nation and name 

With the jackals and wolves of the mart. 



So no rapture of Music is heard 

Save the trivial strain of the lute 
Of the rhymesters. The deeps are unstirred 
By the storm of some wonderful word, 

Since the harp and the harpers are mute; — 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



And blind to the trend of the tides, 

To the light still upborne by the years, 
To the meaning immortal that bides 
Through the ominous noon of new Ides 
And the mystic designs of the spheres. 



They chant treason to Life and their Time, 

Chained to gods that sleep realmless and cold, 
And weave Dian and Phoebus in rhyme 
Out of fables and myths of the Prime 
And the legends whose glory is told. 



Yet no storm from a resonant lyre 

Whelms the querulous pipe and the reed, 
Yet no anthem uprolls like a fire 
From the organ-tubes' thunder; no choir 
Hath a voice for our Age and its need. 



And lo! it hath come that the Stars 

O'er the vast, indivisible States 
Gleam sick to the world, and the Bars 
Of the Standard are spotted, and scars 
Vex the Hesh of the Eagle. The Fates 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Sit stern in the murk as they weave 

An inscrutable glory or doom 
For the robe of the land, and they heave 
Their shuttles that murmur and grieve 

As they shoot the black woof through the loom. 



And where calls a voice to the bards 

To smite with the falchion of Song, 
The head of the hydra that guards, 
Under golden and ponderous Wards, 
The god of the minions of Wrong ? 



From the harps oceanic that round 
The sonorous and ultimate West, 
Four a rapture of music profound 
From their surges of peace, to the ground 
The Atlantic strains unto its breast, — 



May the thunders be mustered to burst 

Like the Horn of the Ram with its blast, 
The gilt-pillared temple accurst 
Where the Snake, in corruption immerst, 
Rears high o'er his worshippers massed! 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Over Time's steep horizons, clouds! 

Bare your phantoms of nations long dead; 
Fling the dust of strong Rome and the shrouds 
Of Tyre on the winds, and the crowds 

Of tall ships bent on Carthage the red. 

Lest swift on these domes by the verge 
Of two seas where our citadels stand, 
The red bolt shoidd fall and the scourge, 
And in room of a warning, a dirge 

Be upborne from the lips of the land! 

* * * 

Still my service and birthright I choose 

With the sons of the Westland, — for long 
We stand devotees bound to the Muse, 
Lest our realm of the Sunset should lose 
Its Hesperian lustre in Song. 

And to thee who divinest my dreams, 

And sharest my thought, I indite 
The remote and most fugitive gleams 
Of these songs, for thou knowest the streams 

Of my soul, and their source, and the light. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



MAN AND THE MOUNTAINS 

The winds of worlds upon the brow of Man, 

Valleys and gorges dark, — 
Twilight, and purple banners in the van 

Of Night's encroaching arc. 

Whisper of weary seraphs, then a hush, — 

Sighs and vast solitude; 
Then the slant lances of the sun where crush 

The mountain-masses rude. 

Serene they sat erect and thronged with awe, 

Prodigious with the sun. 
The salient majesties of peaks, I saw 

Held one mute marvel — one! 

Their brows were red with questions of the Night ; 

Under the white moon's horn 
Their iron queries stood till they grew bright 

With answers of the morn. 



i5 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Again Day's skies embraced them and they tore 
Its light and pierced its dome, 

And with enormous shoulders they upbore 
The gods' celestial home. 

And when the tribulation of the rain 

In mist the ranges furled, 
Their mighty presences pulsed like a pain 

Whose roots seize on the world. 

And oft the voice of the wind, wild orator! 

Clamored and rang on high, 
And then the keen, significant stars no more 

Launched malice from the sky. 

Never mad storm, nor frost, nor summer fire, 

Nor rash bolts blazing blue, 
Moved them — the everlasting ones! to ire 

More than the mild, sweet dew. 

They breathed, and lo! the avalanches sped 

To emerald vales profound, 
Or, harried by the years, some boulder fled 

Down tracks of thunderous sound. 



16 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Man's race was but a murmur through the nights, 

A stain Day bore to view; 
No sacrilege of tongues upon those heights 

Broke the long peace they knew. 

Their caverned orbs saw cities on the plain — 

A thousand domes and towers 
Basked sunbright — and when sank their eyes again 

Wild grass and windward flowers. 

When eons waned and stars strove with their fate, 

Stern Demiurgos came, 
And throned upon their tallest crests he sate 

And spake one potent name. 

Peak leaned to solemn peak. The master stirred 

Their granite lips to speech; 
Each, in that sinister vast awe unheard, 

Darkly communed with each. 

What plots profound, what fathomless designs, 
Throbbed through the palsied air? 

What subtle secrecies oppressed the pines 
Or the cold moon-disc bare? 



17 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Through their deep, runic syllables there ran 

Tides of tremendous doom, 
And when their council closed, the realms of Man 

Lay dust on Time's gray loom. 

Eternity! thy mace's conquering blow 
Shall break and fell these Kings, 

Yet, till her face lie sunless, Earth shall know 
These mighty, mystic Things — 

Whisper of weary seraphs, then a hush,^- 

Sighs and vast solitude; 
Then the slant lances of the sun where crush 

The mountain-masses rude. 

The wind of worlds upon the brow of Man, 

Valleys and gorges dark, 
Twilight, and purple banners in the van 

Of Night's encroaching arc. 



18 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE CHANT OF MAN AND WOMAN 

Earth's iron mingles with my blood, 

But thine with milk is blent ; 
My tears are of the salt-sea flood, 

But thine sweet springs unpent. 
Thy pulse a fertile river glides, 
But mine is urged by ocean-tides. 
All human, human, human, 

The fire of heart we fan. 
Thou are the Queen called Woman; 

I am the King called Man. 

Like mountain-winds o'er towers, 

So calls my voice and rings; 
A fragrant breeze 'midst flowers 

Is thine that sighs and sings. 
A garden-sheltered plant thy form, 
And mine a pine within the. storm. 

All human, human, human, 
Through us a tremor ran. 

Thou art the Queen called Woman; 
I am the King called Man. 

19 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



The eagle sweeps along my glance, 

Spanning all Earth and sky; 
Thy tender doves of vision chance 

No flight so deep, so high. 
My thoughts are flames on mountain heights, 
And thine are lakes of mystic lights. 

All human, human, human, 
The visions that we scan. 

Thou art the Queen called Woman; 
I am the King called Man. 

Like eager lilies drink thine ears 

Love's note and the infant's cry; 
Mine drain the thunder of the spheres 

And rapt as sea-shells lie 
On shores of Life's resounding sea 
And hear one voice — Humanity! 

All human, human, human, 
Curst by no primal ban. 

Thou art the Queen called Woman; 
I am the King called Man. 

Thy cloven bosom's hill and vale, 

Where Love hath set his tents, 
Hold store of raptures ringed by pale 
Of spirit and of sense. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



My breast is fort and battle-field, 
But not to thee — to thee a shield. 
All human, human, human, 

We walk in Nature's van. 
Thou art the Queen called Woman; 
I am the King called Man. 

Thy brow bears halos from the moon, 

Mine fire from out the sun, 
Yet through Life's morning and her noon 

And night they gleam as one. 
Linked stars are we in Nature's train, — 
Forever one — forever twain. 
All human, human, human, 
Fruit of the cosmic plan, 
Thou art the Queen called Woman; 
I am the King called Man. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE FIRE FUNERAL 

(The Cremation of Shelley's Body near Leg- 
horn in the year 1822.) 

On the dolorous shore where remorseful surges 
cast him, 
Lies the poet, cold and white. 
Low groan the billows as their foam goes blow- 
ing past him, 
And his eyes no more are bright. 

Blue eyes bright no more like the azure lustre 
o'er him, — 
Still their blue repays its blue; 
Down his brow's wan splendor all his weeping 
curls deplore him 
Like frail tendrils drooped with dew. 

There he lies, Earth's precious sacrifice to griev- 
ing air and ocean, 
Kissed by wave and wind and sun, 
While the invisible stars of day trail in their 
ghostly motion, 
Mourning for a darkened one. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



But stars shall not behold him more, nor Night 
nor Day forever, 
P'or the pyre looms on the shore, 
And fond arms of brother-poets lift him now with 
love that never 
Such a sweet, sad burthen bore. 

Flames feast upon those seraph lips eternal music 
moulded ; 
Fiery halos orb his head, 
While fire enfolds that body which a soul of fire 
enfolded, — 
West Wind, moan! thy child is dead. 

Skyward rolls like censer-smoke a dark, majestic 
column 
Past the clouds that lift the morn, 
And his sacred heart in balsam by his comrades 
mute and solemn, 
To a northern isle is borne. 

Now the broken twilight smoulders and the crim- 
son coals are dying, — 
Winds and sands the ashes hearse, 
And his dust soars free where worlds and suns, 
on cosmic currents flying, 
Sow it through the Universe. 

23 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE SONG OF A HAPPY SPIRIT 

I fold my shining wings 

Close o'er my throbbing sides; 
I lure the quivering lark that sings 

Through Ether's thrilling tides. 
O'er mottled clouds I climb 

And lash the molten air, — 
Sole Lord am I of Task and Time 

Over human care. 

What is human care? 
Is it the voice of bells that chime 
Beyond the hills? or cities' grime 

Dark and deadly there? 

From dawn till dusk I float 

Where spear the solar rays ; 
On the squat, swelling moon I gloat 

And whirr across her ways; 
I thrid the tops of trees 

And press the mountains bare, 
But still the pulse within the breeze 

Throbs with human care. 

What is human care? 

24 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



The snoring winds bear o'er the seas 
Its burthen in their litanies, 
Rolling to their lair. 

I dart, I flash, I wheel 

From flower unto flower; 
I hunt the dragon-fly and steal 
Through sparry mine and bower; 
Along the foam I skip 

Where blanching billows flare, 
And flaunt the flags of many a ship 
Fraight with human care. 

What is human care? 
Lives it on every mortal lip? 
Is it a plague, a sword, a whip? 

Or flame or smoke or snare? 

Oh! swift I dance and glide 

Over lake — over wold! 
On rusted weather-vanes I ride 

And crosses warm with gold. 
Of Love and Joy I sing 

Or shape a happy prayer, — 
But are those evil winds that bring 

Mortals human care? 

25 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



What is human care? 
For there is no imagining 
Could shape for me the thought or thing 

Whether foul or fair. 

In silences that brood 

Where sun-stained eagles fly 
Above the storms, my brotherhood 

Are happy! they and I 
Know not what lies below 

Our blue dominions fair,— 
Below the shadows naught we know,- 

Naught of human care. 

What is human care? 
Some punishment men undergo? 
Some payment of a debt they owe, 

Which we cannot share? 



26 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE SYMBOL IN THE CAVE 

In a crystal cave I stood, — 

Drop by drop the water ran 
O'er its roof as runs the blood 

Through the coral veins of man. 
Drop by drop the water fell 

To the ground as tears may fall 
When the springs of sorrow well 

From some blind source mystical. 
Slowly from the crusted floor 

Rose the eager virgin cone, 
As its bright mate, hanging o'er, 

Loosed the silver from its stone. 
Male and female so they strove 

Downward, upward through the dark, 
Peak to point, below, above, 

Urged by passion's goad and spark. 
Some stood sundered, some had met, 

Some were melting into one, 
Some built patient pillars set 

In splendor hidden to the sun. 
So they sank and so aspired, 

Though dead ages lay between, 
So Love and Yearning fired 

27 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



The unseeing and unseen. 
And my torch flung maddened light 

Through the spar-hung cavern dim, 
Till it seemed the grot grew bright 

With presences of seraphim. 

In my heart's red chambers surged 

Sudden magic wild and strong, 
As when parted lips are merged 

Like two words within a song. 
From my bosom rose a sigh; 

All its fervent vapor pearled, 
And from my lips a mighty cry 

Rang upward to the world: 

O Love, where art thou? where 

In mystery-mazed night? 
Unveil thy face, — declare 

Thee to my aching sight! 
Oh, grows thy heart to mine 

Through void and voiceless years? 
Oh, fares my heart to thine, 

And lures it on with tears? 
Let clouds and palls be drawn, 

And the lodestone meet the steel ; 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Let deliverance and the dawn 

Soul unto soul reveal. 
So with stormy flame august, 

Love my startled spirit stirred, 
All the cavern, all my dust 

Trembled — trembled — trembled 

When the vatic force assembled, 
Risen round that potent word. 

THE STALACTITE : 

Adoring, I seek thee alone! 

The ocean-wide reaches of years 
I bridge with the trend of my stone 

And fathom this darkness with tears. 
O crystalline virgin, I bend 

Above thee, I hunger and shine. 
Ascend! O pale mistress, ascend 

To the breast that is striving for thine! 

the stalagmite: 

Through cold underearthern, through night 
Thy tears have aroused me to glow 

With an ecstasy fixed by thy sight — 
O Lord of my Life! — see, I grow 

29 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



'Neath caresses and soaring desire 
From beds of the nethermost gloom, 

And thy tears falling on me are fire 

That shapes, though its passion consume. 

the stalactite: 

They drift, pass and die as we yearn — 

Gray eons and darkness and cold; 
Our crests still live severed and burn 

With the pent, sundered kisses they hold. 
Time dies, but our hope hath no death; 

The dews that I garner are rains 
Of rapture I cast with a breath 

On thy head ; — they are blood of my veins. 

the stalagmite: 

I climb with my listening spire; 

To thy glistening spire I climb. — 
'Tis a star that still draweth me higher 

And nigher through distance and Time. 
What impulse exalts me and leads, 

O King, to thy throne on the height? 

30 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



To the heart that burns o'er me and bleeds 
Like a torch o'er a gulf in the night? 

the stalactite: 

Lo ! the pillars about us that stand 

Upholding the plains of the Earth — 
Obedient they joined at command 

Of the love that has given us birth. 
So I sink, so thou risest to me 

Ere the ultimate clasp we attain 
And grow one in Love's crystalline tree 

From longing, from tears and from pain. 

From the ether, from the room 

Splendored by the raving sun, 
To Earth's fire-fertile womb, 

Great Love, thy will be done. 
Thy will be done, O Law 

Whose adamant and steel 
Mysteriously draw 

Hearts, worlds and stones to feel. 
Go draw my heart afar 

To a heart beyond my sight, 
So a star may reach a star — 

Disclose! Exalt! Unite! 

31 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



ATLANTIS 

Westward the pillars slender 

Of Hercules it lay — 
The land whose pride and splendor 

Once burned beneath the day. 
No more the sun shall warm it; 

No more man's footfall be 
In Atlantis, old Atlantis, 

Atlantis in the sea. 

Above her fanes of glory 

The iron vessel steamed, — 
The city shrined in story 

Such as no poet dreamed. 
I knew the marble towers, 

The cold, white majesty 
Of Atlantis, old Atlantis, 

Atlantis in the sea. 



An hundred fathoms to mine eyes, 
Through molten blue and green, 

The sun that towered in the skies 
Drew up the deeps serene. 

32 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Snow-like the roofs and temples, 
The streets with pearls strewn free 

In Atlantis, old Atlantis, 
Atlantis in the sea. 

Silence in dead Atlantis bode; 

Quenched lay her pride and wealth; 
The scarlet sea-flags streamed and flowed; 

The serpents slipped in stealth. 
Pale blooms and shells bedecked her floor, 

And the starred anemone 
In Atlantis, old Atlantis, 

Atlantis in the sea. 

An hundred fathoms to my ken 

Rose white with closen eyes 
A face — so to the sight of men 

The lost, loved women rise. 
It smiled and shone and brightened 

With strange, wild witchery 
From Atlantis, old Atlantis, 

Atlantis in the sea. 

Deep down my heart lay hidden 
Where coral-forests bloomed; 

33 



LOOMS OF LI FE 

Deep down my arms were bidden 
To clasp the city doomed. 

There twice a thousand years agone, 
O Love, I dwelt with thee 

In Atlantis, old Atlantis, 
Atlantis in the sea. 

Beneath the sunbeams and the ships 

One hundred fathoms deep, 
Upon thy sea-cold eyes and Zips 

Roll tides of endless sleep. 
Would that we twain were lying, 

With thy hair flung over me*' 
In Atlantis, old Atlantis, 

Atlantis in the sea. 



SAN FRANCISCO DESOLATE 

Ruin outraced the dawn. 
When the ports of night were drawn, 
Ine feast of death lay spread; 
The city bowed low her head,' 
Disconsolate in the morn, 

34 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Sitting amidst her dead — 
Forlorn! O forlorn! 

Lo! how the touch of day 
Rolleth in pity away 
Over the graves and the fires 
And the houses, domes and spires 

Abject and broken in dust. 
Woe on thine ashes and pyres, 

Young Queen, once august ! 

Flame had goaded the ground, 

And the valves of the deeps profound 

Broke through their riven rock; 

She felt the wrath of the shock 

And a storm upheaved her floor ; — 
Dawn saw the grace that crowned 

My city no more. 

Woe hath befallen thee, 
And thou wringest in misery 
Thy bleeding, despairing hands 
Over thine agonis'd lands, 

For a great grief came to pass ; 
Thy beauty is prey to the brands, 

My city, alas ! 

35 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Thou weepest, mother mine, 
For the dear dead that are thine, 
And the dark tide of thy tears 
Is one not of days but years. 

The ashes lie gray on thy head, 
And deep is thy wound, and thy biers 

Lie dense with the dead. 

Splendor of thine and pride 
Are departed ; the waves deride 
Thee and thy sisters sore, 
And lisp and laugh on the shore, 

And the sun is brave with gold, 
But the sun and the sea no more 

Know thee — as of old. 



Remount, O Queen! resume 
The throne of thy hills ; through the doom 
And the dolor and terror that reign 
O'er thy walls, thou shalt lift again 

Thy head. The sons shall restore 
Anew, from the wastes of thy pain, 

Thy glory once more. 

36 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



O EVANESCENCE! 
(San Francisco) 

I loved a work of dreams that bloomed from Art ; 

A town and her turrets rose 

As from the red heart 
Of the couchant sun where the west wind blows 

And worlds lie apart. 
Calm slept the sea-flats; beneath the blue dome 

Copper and gold and alabaster gleamed, 

And sea-birds came home. 

But I woke in a sorrowful day; 
The vision was scattered away. 
Ashes and dust lay deep on the dream that I 
dreamed. 



37 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE RUINED TEMPLE 
(Grace Church, San Francisco) 

A Temple in a Sunset Land I saw, 

Rent by the throes of Earth, the storms of fire, 
And o'er it brooded wide with spells of awe 

The doom that fell on Sidon and on Tyre. 

And many an arch and ruinous portal there 
Stood stored with memories of a perished time ; 

The stark stones yielded echoes of a prayer; 
The towers quivered with a ghostly chime. 

Faint from the shattered font an infant's cry 
Came forth, and soft the crumbling pillars shed 

The strains of nuptial music blithe and high ; — 
The paves rolled dolorous requiems o'er the 
dead. 

But when the moon smote with her wands of 
white 
The solemn wreck whence all these voices 
poured, 
I heard Time's pinions beat across the night 
And saw the gleam of Death's annulling 
sword. 

38 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



TO THE EARTH-DAEMON 

(An Orison sung in the Season of the 
Earthquake) 

Chorus of All Living Things: 

Daemon of Earth underfoot ! 

Source, yet solace of Ills ! 
Who sleepest supine at the root 

Of the plains and the hills, 



Ages lie spanned by thy breath; 

Thy pulse marks an eon's flow; 
Thy sigh brings us harvest of death 

When it heaves to and fro. 



The Voices of Men Alone: 

Stir never in slumber more; 

Seal fast the gates of thy caves ; 
Fields, cities and seas roof thee o'er- 

Our homes and our graves. 

39 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



May never the core of mid-fires 

Stir thee, lift thee to wrath, 
Where the toil of man aspires 

And Earth glory hath. 

Fair is the planet, though storms 

Tear and torment the air, 
And Horror in myriad forms 

Rolls now here and now there. 

Death conquers where storm-billows leap ; 

Death where the hurricanes blow ; 
Death where flames tower and sweep — 

Is Earth, too, our foe? 

O peace! O leave us the ground; 

Rest in thy chambers deep. 
In thy granite vaults profound 

Sleep thou—so we sleep. 

Our race and its fruits of toil 
In the end thy gulf must fill ; 

Grant us peace of the soil ; 
Grant us peace and be still. 

40 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Rage not like the hungering sea, 
Thou who art heir to all. 

What is ours shall revert to thee 
When Time bids it fall. 

Chorus of All Living Things: 

Daemon of Earth underfoot, 
Source, yet solace of Ills 

Who' sleepest supine at the root 
Of the plains and the hills, 

Ages lie spanned by thy breath ; 

Thy pulse marks an eon's flow ; 
Thy sigh brings us harvest of death 

Wlien it heaves to and fro. 



THE RHAPSODIST 

The slow-unfurling flags 
Of Night droop in the air; 

The Day's supernal master drags 
Headlong to his lair 

41 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



His veils of mellow fire, 

His shrouds of rosy mist 
That with a burning, yet a vain desire 

His rolling flight resist. 



Gone is the golden glamour, 

Gone is the vesper throng, 
Gone is the blithesome and melodious clamor 

Of birds in even-song. 



When the day was hard and white, 
When it sinks to slumber and to night, 
When the Earth lies strangely sad, — 
I rejoice, I rejoice, — I am glad ! 



A lonely sister-planet 

Burneth placidly; 
Only the sun can ban it, 

Or bury it for me, 

Or wrest its smile from me 
Who stand each night upon this hill, 

Mutely still, 
And watch its silver rising o'er the sea. 

42 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



When all is dark (remember 
There is none but the star and I), 
On bended knee, 
With a litany, 

I adore that crystal ember; — 
Yea, I worship it utterly! 



O world of light and loveliness, 
What thing more beautiful could bless 
A fragment of mortality like me? 
Then, as now, I bathe my brow 
And drench it with its beams, 
And my brain blooms like a garden, I vow, 

And all its flowers are dreams. 
But not with orisons alone 
Devotion to the star I own, 

For with song shall I defend it, — 
My pen with song 
Shall be bold and strong 
As an archangelic lance! 
Ah, could you but know the glance 
Of that star you would live but to tend it 
With tears, you would live but to lend it 
Your pale, rapt countenance. 

43 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Still at night-noon you would wait 

On a high hill elate 
And watch its silver rising o'er the sea. 
On bended knee 
With a litany, 
You would worship it with rapture utterly. 
Though you crawl to it half dead 
For the want of little bread, 
You may feast off fairer food 
Than the glutted and the wolfish multitude 
That below your marble mountain, 
Deep beneath your dream, 
Struggle like a maddened stream 
From some black and boiling fountain 
Where fiery fevers gleam. 

Shadows here! shadows there! 
Moiling in the sulphur-steam, 

Toiling in the pale and poisoned air 
Forever, forever. 
But you, ah ! you shall never 
Lose your starry joys whose stealth 
Builds the soul's eternal wealth, 

Not hard and haunted gold. 
Though men deny you fire 

When the year is white and old, 
You shall warm your heart with a lyre 
44 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Fallen from the holier, higher 
Flames upon an astral pyre, 
And be no more a-cold. 



So every night 

On my lone, lone height, 
In rapture 
I capture 

The frailest and fairest of things 

That the light of my soft star brings, 
For they flutter above me with shimmer 

Of their tinted, moth-like wings; 
They are dreams that grow dimmer and dimmer 

As the morn-mist brighter grows; 
They die, O, they die ! when the glimmer 

Of morn is rich with the rose. 



O long, long, long. 
May I kneel to my gentle star, 

And I would I might raise a song 

That might fly to its flame divine — 
A song in a voice that is sweeter far 

Than the voice that despairs in mine. 
All through the tense night-hours 

45 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



My soul lifts like the ocean 

Lifts to the falling showers 
Of the moon's omnipotence, 
And its every mood and emotion 
To that vasty eloquence, 
Bends like a child in a loving, mild, 
Devoted obedience. 

My passionate, constant adoring 

Hath burthen of prayer and of plea ; 
It is rilled with an endless imploring 
That the beam which ineffably 
Blesses my lifted face, 
May burn each night on the soaring height 
Of this ancient, desolate place, 
Though it burn no more for me, — 
Even here on this rock-rent hill 
Where, ever alone and still, 
On bended knee, 
With a litany, 
I watched its silver rising from the old, imperious 



46 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



KEATS AT WINTER SUNDOWN 
(Hampstead Heath, London) 

I know, worn fire, that thou wilt rise again 
Tomorrow and on morrows dark to me — 

But here, here in my heart, there burns that pain 
Of farewell deep as trouble of the sea. 

It is a grief unparted from the heart 

As is Life's ruby fountain in its grot; — 

O keen, inseparable pain, where art 
Thou not ? Where Love and Happiness are not. 

No less I feel it when I view the rose, 
For in a day shall fall its loveliness; 

Alas ! I know, I see it in the close 

Of this old, gray and dying year no less. 

Deep in the eyes of Beauty it reminds; 

It warns from every song as it is sung — 
Yet Earth again shall know these in their kinds, 

But nevermore that bard who died too young. 

47 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE TOWER GARDEN 

(London) 

Grim granite and harsh flint the bastions rose; 
The battlements frowned gray; the moat was 
deep; 
Around me rang the city in its throes, — 

They were not like my heart's — which never 
sleep. 



Here once we sat when Spring compelled the air; 
The birds wove song and motion through the 
skies ; 
Dreams sat within her eyes and she was fair; 
Her face was strange with silence like her 
eyes. 



We saw the children play, but now no more 
I see them through the eyes of greater love. 

The winds' vast globes roll haunted and their 
core 
Is molten with her voice, and memories rove. 

48 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



This is the self-same spot; the ancient Tower, 
Eternally unchanged beholds me come. 

But O! it is no more the self-same hour, — 
Old Earth has clasped her and her lips are 
dumb. 



LONDON IN SNOW 

White, white they lie, smoke-smitten roofs and 
streets, — 
Their yearlong black distemper blanched 
away; 
Their faces and their spaces gray in sheets 

Of splendor wonder-wrought are born to Day. 

Air-flocking armies seize the shackled town; 
Their tents are bright on house-tops and in 
fields ; 
Their lances hang in rows, their banners drown 
The blinded lawns that gleam like argent 
shields. 

Clad on with ermine, lo ! the muffled limbs 
Of trees grow shadows mated unto night; 

49 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



The roving eye is lured along the rims 

Of walls that stretch victorious lines of white. 

The deadened fall of foot and hoof unheard 
Breaks not the fettered air; the wheels are 
dumb 

On smothered ways; the sullen stream unstirred 
Engulfs the swift, bright legions as they come. 

Old dome and tower, pinnacle and spire 

Are charmed to crusted marble 'gainst the 
clouds 

In which, enmeshed, the struggling round of fire 
Peers dim and red across the city's shrouds. 

There let her lie in beauty 'neath the hems 
Of mantles pure, miraculous and cold. 

And leaden skies. Soon toiling Town and 
Thames 
Shall hold their ancient grayness as of old. 



50 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE SEA AND THE CITY 

When the dust of toil lies scattered 

And robes the setting sun ; 

When the town's dull day is shattered 

And the world's great night begun; 
When Even ascends her station, 
And Peace the throne of my heart; 
When the streets grow a desolation 

And Silence broods in the mart — 

When over the wastes oceanic 

The nightly lanterns rise, 
And the clouds are diaphanic 

Like love in a young maid's eyes, — 
Then pearls that in buoyant millions 

O'er sighing salt-floods gleam, 
And stars in their blue pavilions 

My radiant sisters seem. 



5i 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE THRONE OF THE STORM 

Assembled in the firmamental plain, 

The marshalled clouds loom ominous and dire, 
Charged with fell thunder and the missile rain 

And pregnant with their burthen of rash fire. 

The rebel winds and armament of mists 
Threaten the city's peaks of carven stone; 

The lances of the lightnings in their lists 
Are couched for battle by the evening's throne. 

Arrayed above the sunset red they stand — 
The crests of clouds in day's retreating light, 

While slow the enormous dusks on either hand 
Roll up the devouring barriers of the night. 

But soon shall fall the bolt to strew them wide 
In foray fierce across the colored waste 

Where monsters now and giant dragons dyed 
Rich in the edging sun, rear golden-faced. 

O wait ! ye lurking imminences vast, 

And powers abortive in your cloudy domes ; 
Then dart your blades from ambush, fling your 
blast 
Upon your prey — this world of hearts and 
homes ! 

52 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE LEPER OF LONDON 

In Euston Road in London Town, 
I saw and felt and wrote this down. 

Her cheek was pale, her form was gaunt; 

She seemed so strangely thin, 
Thin as the shrouded ghosts that haunt 

Scenes of their earthly sin. 

She clutched my arm; with mordant words 

Assailed my quailing ear — 
Her face was like a starved bird's ; — 

Such speech do devils hear. 

Her hands were clinging claws that burned 
Through skin and flesh and bone, 

While Sorrow seared those eyes she turned 
Like dead stars on my own. 

That voice rose whirling to my brain 

And sought to shatter it ; 
I know to demons its refrain 

Is torment in the pit. 

53 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



She seemed of equal age with me, 

Yet blithe and fresh was I, 
And she was like some blasted tree 

The bolts had doomed to die. 

She stood enwrapped with charnel air 

And pestilence's breath; 
Harmattan winds had whipped her bare 

And given her to Death. 

It seemed his voice of doom and blight 

Rang round her like a dirge, 
And from her face, like spectral light, 

Gleamed forth the Great White Scourge. 

I looked upon a world of woes 

And peered through Horror's land, 

Then in mine eyes the waters rose, 
And gold fell from my hand. 

I shook and drew my arm away 

And through the night I fled 
From deeper night that knew no day 

Save of the living dead. 

54 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



I felt the curse of human things, — 
Man, Law, the strife of Earth; 

I felt the thrice-curst fate that brings 
Woe to the babe at birth. 

And those remorseless rods that fall 

From palaces and domes 
On worms that perish as they crawl 

Athwart a nation's homes. 

One blessing mounted from the thought 

And o'er my spirit fell; 
That figure dread had dashed to naught 

The realms of After-hell. 



MANHATTAN 

Atlantes of the firmament! abrupt 

The granite monsters of Manhattan frown,— 
Phalanx of Titans, stark and interrupt, 

Their tyrannous grim bulks oppress the town. 

Their gonfalons and vaporous plumes at play 
Stream rhythmic to the city's stormy beat, 

Her giant pulse that goads the groaning day 
To pile its mortal labor at their feet. 

55 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



The stunned sea clasps the aching iron isle 
That holds eternal tumult in its heart, 

While Greed's great laugh from pile to towering 
pile, 
Leaps in relentless triumph o'er the mart. 

Incessant roars her fevered race of lives 

Crushed through the sunless channels of her 
stone, 

Or flung across the paths where Mammon drives 
His chariot wheels o'er ways of flesh and bone. 

What brand upon the brow of man? what mark 
That hounds worn spirits toward a glittering 
goal? 

Where Luxury lifts her ashen husks, and dark 
Earth idols force their usury from the soul. 

O thunder-wrought Manhattan ! shaped of gold 
Thy tongue, thine eyes of blind basalt, of steel 

Thy smothered breasts still young — yet bleak and 
old 
The mountainous gray weariness they feel. 

Thy life is eaten by thine eagerness, 

And round thy doomward sandals whirlwinds 
roar, 

56 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



And round thy wreck-mad walls the tempest's 
stress 
Riots from adamantine shore to shore. 

Now Anarchs of Annihilation take 

Their sleep of golden torpor in the glow 

Of thy sky-storming summits — when they wake 
What ruin red shall their war-trumpets blow? 



"AN AMIABLE CHILD" 

(On its Grave near Grant's Tomb, New York) 

Dust of a bud of Spring, 
Dust of a long-dead child, 
How deep in saintly slumber! 
Though myriad footsteps ring 
On paves by crime defiled, 
Where woes of men encumber 
These grasses wet and wild. 

Calm be thy sleep beside 
The river visions fair, 

57 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Unstirred by that dark river 
Of Life whose downward tide 

Bears wreckage of Despair, 
Where lips, like wounds that quiver, 

Move bloody with a prayer. 

Oft silent pass the hosts 
By fever-phantoms led, 
Where glooms the murky city, — 
Silent to thee as ghosts 
That mourn young flowers fled; 
Their steps weave spells of pity 
And memory o'er thy head. 

High o'er the morselled stone 
The hero's pyramid 
In haggard granite towers 
Enormous, bleak and lone, 
But where thy curls lie hid, 
Fall sun and rain and showers 
Warm from the full eyelid. 

Thy grave seems like a song 
Of peace in iron frays, 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



A voice o'er wastes of madness, 
Greed, misery and wrong, 

A voice that might upraise 
Thy bright and infant gladness 

To bless our loveless days. 

O storm-shod centuries! 

Here grow your sick souls well, 
Where this dead child is lying 
'Neath olden stones and trees, 
Where one sweet word shall tell 
Of a tenderness undying 

And the heart where it did dwell. 

BEAUTY TROVE 

Beauty, where dwellest thou? 

Adores the unchanging sea 
Thy foam-white foot at dawn 

O'er some untrodden lawn 
Glimmers thy starry brow 

Where hast thou hidden thee? 

In the still forest naves 

Do birds and beasts behold 

59 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Thy face in shrines of green? 

Thy light, perchance, is seen 
In spar-hung crystal caves 

Lavish with shattered gold? 

Mayhap on peaks august, 
'Mid the pure hermit-snows, 

Thy dance is rosy bright? 
Build us a morn from night 

In this dim world of dust 

Where the cold death-wind blows. 

We seek thee where we build 

Our house of happiness, 
And yet we find thee not. 

Where lies the sacred spot 
That with thy smile is filled? 

Where Life may bloom and bless? 

For we are blind to Life, 

And Change is like a veil, 
Let thy presaging eyes 

Shine from these dunnest skies, 
Calming the iron strife 

WTierein our spirits fail. 

60 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Thou hauntest star and sun, 
The moon, the mortal mind; 

Thou art in eye and cheek, 
Spirit still hears thee speak 

From shadows, from the dun 
Cloud and the solemn wind. 

Thou bidest still with us, 
Though mists our vision fill, 

Though oft thy robes be changed, 
Thy face is not estranged; 

Thy rose miraculous 

Blooms by our pathway still. 

Raise us a fairer song, — 
Fairer than all the Past! 

Yield us thy draught divine, 
Blood shall grow rapt as wine, 

And faint eyes, waxing strong, 
See the new realms thou hast! 



61 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



ASSAULT OF SILVER 

Eve's skies glowed red and resolute, 

The morn's were meek and gray; 
Down sank a myriad angels mute 

And dense their legions lay. 

The muffled mutiny of life 

Strove with the white- winged host ; 

Dull rang the broken steps of strife ; 
The city grew a ghost. 

A ghost, a spirit robed in white, 

Whose stains were wiped away ; 
Pure to the slatey face of night 

Like a fair bride she lay. 

But on the highways of the town 

The drifts were trodden stark 
Where vanquished flakes sank shuddering down 

To ruin deep and dark. 

The streets grew grim with mire, but still 

The roofs were blest with white, 
And gardens and the guarded hill 

Lay radiant to the sight. 

62 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



To the Presence of 
WASHINGTON IRVING 

In Lindaraxa's Garden by the fountain, 

I see thee, gentle phantom, woo the light, — 

Thou smilest ! — as fare forth the magic mountain 
Old dreams of Moorish glories reft from night. 

Thine eyes beheld their pageant's necromancy; 

Thee living 'mid these ruins now I see. 
Thou didst reinhabit them with thy fancy; 

My fancy now reinhabits them with thee. 

The Alhambra, Granada, Spain. 



63 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE LOOMS OF LIFE 
To Dr. Ernst Haeckel of Jena. 

In a garden, in its shade, 

Sheltered from the matin-glow, 

Once I dreamed beside a maid 
And longed new worlds to know. 

For I envied winds that blew, — 
I, who happy lived of men, 

Envied all the birds that flew 
And was unhappy then. 



When the sun shone strong and fair, 
Rash I left the garden-close; 

Left the maiden weeping there — 
A rose beside the rose. 



Wildwoods were aburst with song, 
Purple fell their shadows all, 

Chanting rivers danced along, 
And roared the waterfall. 

64 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



From the molten, rolling sphere, 

Pleasant fell the sifted heat 
O'er my heart whose red career 

Seemed tambour to my feet. 

In a forest darkly cool 

For a draught I bent me down 

O'er a sky-blue painted pool; — 
My dangling locks shone brown. 

Soon the noon clomb to his heights 
And sate sovereign o'er his sun, 

Where the condors and the kites 
Enormous spirals spun. 

Black like demons o'er the world 

Rushed their shadows. Low was hewn 

Straight the peak of Day and hurled 
Down slopes of Afternoon. 

Fallen fervor left the air; 

Eld oppressed the stricken light; 
She wove wearinesses where 

The East announced the Night. 

65 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Slow the blue and arching calms 
Loosed their splendor fire-orbed: 

Winds grew sighs and slumb'rous psalms 
The brooding Earth absorbed. 

Thus was Night — adown the skies 

An incessant rumor sped; 
It lay upon my heart as lies 

A stone upon the dead. 

Fell a lethargy meseemed 

Over me — the ponderous curse 

Passed, and this the dream I dreamed, 
Lost in the Universe. 

Breaking, cleaving earthly bounds 
Hedged by undivulging sleep, 

Past the stellar lights and sounds 
I plumbed an endless deep. 

Nature there with stilly eyes 
Reft of light or living spark, 

Loomed upon a central rise, 
A flame-defended arc. 

66 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



There erect in awful state, 

Wrapt in cosmic gloom sublime, 

Towered calm, inviolate, 
The daughter of old Time. 

Substance stood beside her throne, 

Robed with wonders strangely wrought,- 

Force and Substance they alone 
Her ministers — and Thought. 

They were giants beautiful — 

Three, with pinions bright and wide, 

All silent in the sacred lull 
Where mysteries abide. 

Substance soared a seraph grand, 
Shaped of pearl and opal-stone, 

With a globe in either hand 
At basis of the throne. 

Force was wrought of warmer flame; 

In his hands the levins danced; 
Rapture trembled through his frame 

And from his plumes it glanced. 

67 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Thought of all stood loveliest; 

Fulgent on his brow the beams 
Shook with lustre manifest 

To mortals but in dreams. 

Son was he of Energy, 

Fashioned of his finer fires, 
Tall he flamed as o'er the sea 

Some crater's torch aspires. 

Then with orbs that held no more, 

Vapid in the sterile light, 
I saw the three great spectres bore 

Stark eyes devoid of sight. 

Eyes of iron or of stone, 

Blank as waste infinity, 
While Nature, sightless on her throne, 

Ruled o'er the sightless three. 

Eyes like deserts gray and dead, 
Or the plains of stagnant seas, 

Or the parched moon overhead — 
Their eyes seemed like to these. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Mute their frozen lips as cliffs 
Where the unseen eagle clings, 

Yet darkly great with hieroglyphs 
And weird with whisperings. 

As a fountain's water drips 
Tinkling on the chilly stones, 

Substance with his lucid lips 
Spoke forth in crystal tones : 

"What thou hast I gave to thee ; 

Of my being's bulk thou art, 
Yet shalt thou return to me 

And render part for part." 

Like the roaring of a flame, 

Like the breathing of the Flood, 

Then a rolling voice there came 
Tumultuous o'er my blood. 

"Into thee my breath did pass ! 

Energy hath made to burn 
That which stirs thy living mass 

Yet shall to me return." 

69 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Like some echo frail and far, 

Fell the silver voice of Thought, 

Faint as trembles from a star 
A ray from gulfs of Nought. 

"I alone have raised thy state 
O'er the flower, bird or gem, — 

Kingly clay, yet co-create 

With Earth that houses them." 

Then Nature's trebled voice I heard, 
Stirring all my smitten soul 

As a smitten reed is stirred 
By winds from off the Pole : 

"So they blindly wove and weave 
Worlds as they have woven thee : 

Let energy to Substance cleave 
And Thought crown Man for me. 

All I hold who silent lie, 
Blind at Life's illusive root ; 

In me all gods and ages die, 
All suns grow cold and mute. 

70 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



"I in Process and in Plan 
Am the sowing, am the seed, 

Am the harvest, and to Man 
The iron Laws of Need." 

Through that spell-tormented gloom, 
Fast with Terror's icy stress, 

Denser darkness fell like doom; 
The voice grew less and less. 

There within their deeps alurk, 

Whelmed in Chaos, wombed in Night, 

Laboring at their telic work, 
The Powers sank from sight. 

Then the awful dusks were drawn 

On the fateful potencies 
Blind and dead, where never dawn 

Smites on their mysteries. 

All my shattered senses swam 

And in vapor passed away 
Ere the solar oriflamb 

Shone in my Earthly day. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Shone again, although the year 

Stood where sighing Autumn grieves 

And the Earth was burning sere 
With storms of perished leaves. 

Now I felt no more the flame 
In my heart, nor roving rage, 

And I seemed as one that came 
From some long pilgrimage. 

Slow I sought the garden-close 
For a maiden mourning there ; 

Savage winds had wrecked the rose 
And cast it on the air. 

But no maiden more I found 

Though her blessed name I cried 

Through the garden's sainted ground 
And all the world beside. 

As a silent pool I passed 

Toward the dying of the day, 

To mine eyes its silver glassed 
My locks of ashen gray. 

72 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Then a vision and a light 

Rose athwart the years I whiled 

In the deeps. From out the night 
Came the crying of a child. 

With my yearning hands agrope, 
Long I erred within the wood, 

Calling on the child to hope; — 
Methought it understood. 

Was it echo of my voice 

That within the forest rang? 

Still it bade the babe rejoice 
And once, I knew it sang. 

Soon a tiny hand I grasped 

Which my eager fingers spanned, 

While my other hand was clasped 
Warm by a woman's hand. 

Then I knew it was the maid 
As her woman's heart was prest 

Close to mine. We long had strayed 
Each on the other's quest ! 

73 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



'Neath the moon we trembled there; 

Now the infant lips were still, 
And through Earth and Flesh and Air 

We felt great Nature's will. 



HYMN TO THE PASSING EARTH 

When the cliff crumbles and the splintered peak 

Feels the sharp fracture of the frost and snow ; 
When the fell deluge and the rivers seek 

To drag green continents where oceans flow; 
When moons are darkened and the suns lose 
lustre, 

And the worn axles of old Earth turn slow, 
While stars in terror round her orbit cluster 

To peer upon her fall and overthrow, 
And all Creation in an endless flowing, 

Is tidal toward her still and secret springs, 
Oblivious to his coming and his going, 

Must Man be numbered with her mortal things ? 

Bleak Time shall part the worlds on roads of 
thunder, 
Loosen and level and annul all bands, 

74 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Strike love-linkt hearts with sudden glaive 
asunder 

And break the clasp of fond and fettered hands, 
Still bid the glacier's monstrous travail bear 

Her icebergs to their oceanic sire, 
And from the crater's throat convulsive flare 

Doom's sable flag of ashes fringed with fire. 

O ancient anguish of the dry sea-hollow ! 

And weight of patience of the withered plains, 
And valleys thwarted of their joy — when follow 

The winsome blooms and emerald gift of rains ? 
When shall the tumult of Earth's tides and 
changes 

Lift the sea's Kraken to the sun-bleached crags ? 
When the massed, shelved and adamantine ranges ' 

Dethroned, nurse coral and the salt-ooze flags? 

Though all fair territories of the globe be riven, 

And weedy continents slow-heaving rise 
From cloven foam, and dark, strange seas be 
driven 
To shape new shores 'neath re-assembled skies, 
Though Time shall strike a silence through the 
ringing 

75 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Sweet sisterhood of strings in human harps, 
The hands that smote them and the lips whose 
singing 

Was rapture ! blend with dust of Alpine scarps, 
Not these are measure for Man's deeds — nor yet 

The lives of suns in the mutable Immense, 
Nor prone despair of unplumbed distance set 

Past baffled brains and closen shores of sense. 

Though Ozymandias and Rameses win 

No whisper of their fames where darkly hid, 
The desert devours the Sphinx and locks within 

Its breast lost Luxor and the Pyramid, 
Though bronze betray its trust, and scriptured 
glory 

Of great bards vanish like the sceptred kings, 
Must Man, on Nature's temple threshold hoary, 

Groan at the far futility of things ? 

O great gray question ! still the deeps lie shrouded 

With midnights round the word for which we 

yearn. 

What though across the Future's peaks unclouded 

Ne'er sign nor answering symbol soar and 

burn — 

76 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



In light and not in shadow fall our race! 

Nor shall the monster staves of Cosmos blight 
Man in his mundane majesty of place 

Nor halt his march against the evening height. 



THE MASTER OF MAGNIFICENCE 

Embattled like a phalanx tall, 

The sharp Sierran summits gleamed ; 

Their frozen pyramids stood all 

Enchanted and their forests dreamed. 

Above their argent slopes the sun 
Hung like a golden shield on high; 

His joyous love fell fast upon 

Their crests and showered from the sky. 

He saw where aureate valleys sweep 
Their leagues of wheaten billows forth, 

And marked two master rivers creep 
To Ocean, flowing South and North. 

Then broke his level flight of spears 
Through passive airs a pathway free 

77 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



To where the toil of myriad years 

Had reared the deathless mammoth tree. 

The Earth lay pregnant rich with ore, 
And felt her sunless treasures play 

Like wonder in her veins, and bore 
Her metals glittering to the day. 

Raised not the sinuous vine her round 
And purple gems to charm his eye? — 

She who drank rapture from the ground 
And amorous fever from the sky. 

The fields in adoration bent; 

The orange burned to match his fire, 
While hills aglow with flowers sent 

Their paeans to their lord and sire. 

So throned upon the stainless air, 

He cast his gold with royal hand 
Where realm on realm spread wide and fair- 

The peerless Californian Land! 



78 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



SONG OF THE SUNDOWN 

Across the prone Pacific vast, 

Struck into emerald laced with white, 

With gold enchased, and overcast 

With red, the homeless sun took flight. 

Loth from the vantage of his gaze 

The fast harmonic law compelled 
His westward plunge to build the days 

Round Orient ranges citadelled. 

Magnificent his min'stry trode, — 

The apparelled clouds bore mountain crests, 
And to their lord, as down he rode, 

Offered their broad, emblazoned breasts. 

Yet golden, golden ran a lane 

From sun to city o'er the sea; 
The trend of tides that swept the plain 

Flickered, then crossed it brokenly. 

Then reached the blue horizon up 
And seized the rondure of the rim 

79 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Of the great globe; the ocean's cup 
Trembled with glory to the brim. 

The fervor of his passion's thirst 

Sank slaked within the emerald wine, 

While reddening vapors curled and burst 
Like fumes of myrrh above a shrine. 

So the strong sea bore down the sun, 
Nor any more his splendor fell 

Upon the city's hills, though one 
Rose ghostly with a dim farewell. 

Yet for a space two fiery lips 

Lay smouldering on the darkening green ; 
A farewell trembled to the ships, 

And Day was lulled in dusk serene. 

Slowly aloft the landward skies 

Now mounts the rolling, argent sphere; 
The pointed stars unseal their eyes 

Each sharpened with a gleaming tear. 

Then one by one the lamps awake 
Where loom the city's barriers dun; 

Her streets begin to bloom and break 
With points of lustre, one by one. 

80 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



The waves lap on, the breezes stray; 

Her stony pomp is robed in light; 
She that flamed golden to the Day, 

Now glitters silvern to the Night. 



VALE, CALIFORNIA 

Roaring to Southward rolled the train. The 
night 

Down firmamental fields to Westward bore 

Her arc of soft eclipse, the hills and shore 
Enfolding, save where sunset stormed with light 
The spines of gilded peaks whose Heavenward 
height 

The aspect of an earthly parting wore. 

Rose then, revolving Day, whose splendor more 
Made splendid palm and orange in my flight. 

Though Alps their massifs interpose, or sands 
Of wind-worn, dappled deserts sunder me 

From thee, O mother, or the floods' great awe ; 
Not siren cities nor enchanted lands, 

Nor old isles 'stablished in their subject sea, 
From thee my loyalty and love shall draw! 

81 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE SHADOW O'ER THE CITY 
(San Francisco) 

Vast hung the moon o'er ruins black and prone, 
And where the torn, flame-stricken summits 

blight 
The heavens, there crouched all vigilant in light, 

Two marble lions by a palace lone 

Whose portals hungry weeds had overgrown, 
Whose mangled walls gave ingress to the Night 
And all her stars. There Silence sat upright, 

Ash-crowned, and wrought a menace round her 
throne. 

Low in the vales each litten thoroughfare 
Trembled, as Life, with roses tossing red, 
Danced in her glittering garments through 
the town; 
But high across the still, moon-fettered air, 
Full on the living streets I saw the dead 
Look darkly and inexorably down. 



82 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



LONDON 

Dismay drags down the condor-plumes of Thought 
And holds in pause the strive of Fancy's prow 
Where Time's behemoth towers. Answer, thou 
Gray monster of the modern Chaos wrought 
Along the amazed meads, one flower-fraught, 
What voices lure the ravens round thy brow ? 
What leagues must feed thy sateless hunger 
now, 
Ere to the assailant seas thy bourn be brought? 

The island sinks beneath thee, sinks though hewn 
From granite of sea-ramparts, and the land 

Thy mordant shadows gnaw, fades like the moon 
By huge, eclipsing blackness struck and banned 

In sight of men who tremble at high noon, 
Fearing some terror of the night at hand. 



83 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



TO MIMIC POETS 

Why should the poet dwell in vanished days, 

Deaf to his own and blind to all their light ? 

Why piece old shattered gods or from their 
night 
The ghosts of weary nymphs and satyrs raise 
To dance to measures false in alien ways 

Within this modern glare and fever-blight, 

This blasting air ? And yet there grow as bright 
Now, as of old, the imperishable bays. 

Fair was the Past — how fair ! and yet it seems 
Fair, too, this age of iron could be drawn, 

For it hath mighty glories and great dreams 
And powers, and a light that is as dawn 

To futures golden with far richer themes 
Than poet ever sang on Tempe's lawn. 



84 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



TO WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

Pale Orpheus of the Celt ! thy music pure 

Strikes flame once more to Erin's vanished light, 
A flame whose soaring tongues shall wreck the 
night 
That walled her shores. Shall not these notes 
endure ? — 

This rapture of clear harps that thrills the 
stones 
And wakes the saddened sods of thy lorn land ?— 

Of which thou art a bulwark, and thy tones 
^Eolian breath to fire her heart and hand. 

AND YET— 

Art thou not some illusive, moon-white ghost? — 
Some exhalation from the fair, dead form 
Of a long-buried and Earth-banished fay 
Whom ne'er thy lustre cold, nor querulous host 
Of phantoms shall revive? This Age's storm 
Canst thou endure, and blaze of living day? 



85 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



ACME! 

Eternal speech framed by the planets' tongue ! 
Stir me with music of the primal morn 
That woke the worlds when first the sun was 
borne 

Exultant past his subject spheres that hung 

Like ore the night imperious had wrung 

Living from cosmic quarries, and had worn 
Extinguished on her brow. Her shadow, shorn, 

Crumbled when Day his flaming javelin flung. 

Roaming I sought that light of great release, 
So it might loose me from the clouds that 
swept 
Westward my years of youth and brought no 
peace 
Ever to my red heart that clomb and crept 
Eager on Love's far quest that could not cease 
Till by his torch my steps stood intercept. 



86 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE SCULPTURED INDIAN 
(In the Bohemian Grove, California) 

Image of the vanished tribes, this tree's enormous 
hollow, 
Holds thee as thou starest West. 
When, O silent chieftain, shall thy phantom foot- 
steps follow 
Them to Manitou and rest? 

Never from the dim aisles of this sombre-shad- 
owed valley 
Roamest thou, O lonely one! 
Brave, for thee the chase is done, and done the 
battle-sally ; 
The warrior-dance is done. 

In thy red-shafted forest now an alien tongue is 
waking ; 
Faces strange surround the feast, 
But never to thy patient eyes shall dawn for thee 
come breaking, 
Since thy night fell from the East. 

87 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Abide, stern, steadfast sentinel, so long as in this 
forest, 
Lifts each towering tree by tree; 
Thou bearest gifts of grace to us for ills that 
smite us sorest, 
Ills that force us to> the knee. 



Thy bronzen hands hold all we lost, the heritage 
of ages — 
Son of Strength, we thank thee for 
This magic of thy woods and winds — this glory of 
old pages 
From the tome of Nature's lore. 



THE PJEAN OF THE POPPIES 

Sprent from the hands of Spring, 
The golden seed is falling 

O'er meadows loud with light, 
And hills that harvest bring 

When warm the winds go calling 
The poppies up from night, 
Restoring Earth her sight. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



The mountains sway with flame 
Where the frail glories tremble, — 
Fair fallen stars of fire ! 
The valleys green acclaim 
The legions that assemble 
In royal robe and tire. 
With timbrel, shawm and quire. 



Stained with the ruby's wine, 
Gilt by the sunset lustre, 

Swung by the sunset breeze, — 
So do their beakers shine, 

So flare their crowns in clusters, 
So bow across the leas 
Like beacons o'er the seas. 



Afar in darker lands 

I feel their kisses burning 
As sweet, uncertain lips, 
As faint, unhindered hands 
Are felt by exiles yearning 
On shores when tears eclipse 
The wan and westering ships. 

89 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE SIERRA SNOW-PLANT 

Thou growest in eternal snows 

As flower never grew; — 
The sun upon thy beauty throws 

No kiss — the dawn no dew. 

Thou knowest not the love-warm marl 

Of Earth, but dead and white 
The wastes wherein thy roots ensnarl 

Ere thou art freed in light. 

Where blighted dawns, with twilight blent, 

Die pale, thou liftest strong, 
A tongue of crimson eloquent 

With one unceasing song. 

Thou glowest like an angel's thought 

Or like a poet's word; 
Thy perfect peace is stirred by naught, 

By naught thy dream is stirred. 

More deeply dark than dyes that burn 

The Gorgon's foaming vein, 
Thy calyx-bells are red that turn 

No leaves aloft for rain. 
90 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Didst pierce, thou rash, ensanguined spear 

The Galilean's side 
On Golgotha, and bleedest here 

By penance glorified? 

From visions bright of worlds that lie 
Where fairer stars may glow, 

Bringst thou some secret of the sky 
Which man may never know? 

Serene thy smile, past plaint or plea, 

On star-surrendered heights 
Where alps Sierran loom o'er thee 

And huge, companioned nights. 

O Life in vasts of Death! O Flame 
That thrills the stark expanse; — 

Let Love and Longing be thy name! — 
Love and Renunciance. 



THE CALIFORNIAN POPPY. 

Thou seem'st an ember from the sun, 

A topaz from the mine. 
Tell, poppy, on what looms were spun 

Those fragile robes of thine? 

91 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Thy trembling torch ignites the hills 
To youth, — then opens gold 

Thy grail whereinto morning spills 
A tear thou canst not hold. 

There cannot bide one lonely tear 

In thy red heart aglow 
With blood that never pales with fear 

Such as hearts human know. 

Thy sisters far in mystic lands 

Their dream-drowned chalice keep, 

And mould with dim, phantasmal hands 
Weird, necromantic sleep. 

Yet thou art fairer than their dreams, 

O poppy of the West, 
For Beauty seeks thee garbed in gleams 

That make her manifest. 

'Tis meet thy foliate gold should shine 

Beneath these Titan trees ; 
'Tis meet thy cup should sing with wine 

By these Pacific seas. 

92 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



For gold and wine and sunset dye 
Thy beauty's crown triune, 

Yet rouse the sad eternal sigh 
That beauty fades too soon. 

O more than emblem of the State 
Where all thy glamour springs, 

For thou art emblem of the fate 
Of Earth's most lovely things. 



MARY OF MILRONE 

(A Simple American Border Ballad of the 
Southwest) 

I shot him where the Rio flows ; 
I shot him when the moon arose, 
And where he lies the vulture knows 
Along the Tinto River. 

In schools of Eastern cities pale, 
My cloistered flesh began to fail; 
They bore me where the deserts quail 
To winds from out the sun. 

93 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



I looked upon the land and sky, 
Nor hoped to live nor feared to die, 
And from my hollow breast a sigh 
Fell o'er the burning waste. 

But strong I grew and tall I grew ; 
I drank the region's balm and dew, — 
It made me lithe in limb and thew — 
How swift I rode and ran! 

How oft it was my joy to ride 
Over the sand-blown ocean wide, 
While, ever smiling, at my side 
Rode Mary of Milrone. 

A flood of horned heads before, 
The trampled thunder, smoke and roar 
Of full four thousand hoofs or more — 
A cloud, a sea, a storm. 

O wonderful the desert gleamed ! 
Man and woman, we spoke and dreamed 
Of Love-in-Life till the white wastes seemed 
Like the Plains of Paradise. 

94 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Her eyes with Love's great magic shone,- 
"Be mine, O Mary of Milrone, — 
Thy hand, thy heart be all mine own!" 
Her lips made sweet response: 

"I love thee, — yes, for thou art he 
Who from the East should come to me- 
And I have waited long !" O, we 
Were happy as the sun ! 

There came upon a hopeless quest, 
With hell and hatred in his breast, 
A stranger who his love confest 
To Mary long in vain. 

To me she spake: "O chosen mate, 
His eyes are terrible with fate, — 
I fear his love, I fear his hate — 
I fear some looming ill !" 

Then to the church we twain did ride ; 
I kissed her as she rode beside. 
How fair! — how passing fair my bride 
With gold combs in her hair! 

95 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Before the Spanish priest we stood 
Of San Gregorio's Brotherhood — 
A shot rang out ! and in her blood 
My blue-eyed darling lay. 

God ! I carried her beside 

The Virgin's altar where she cried, — 
Smiling upon me ere she died : 
"Adieu, my love, adieu !" 

1 knelt before Saint Mary's shrine, 
And held my dead bride's hand in mine, 

' 'Vengeance," I cried, "O Lord, be Thine, 
But I Thy minister!" 

I kissed her thrice and sealed my vow, — 
Her eyes, her sea-cold lips and brow, — 
"Farewell! my heart is dying now, 
O Mary of Milrone!" 

Then swift upon my steed I leapt ; 
My streaming eyes the desert swept ; 
I saw the accursed where he crept 
Against the blood-red sun. 

96 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



I galloped straight upon his track, 
And nevermore my eyes looked back; 
The world was barred with red and black; 
My heart was a flaming coal. 

Through the delirious twilight dim 
And the blank night I followed him ; 
Hills did we cross and rivers swim, 
My fleet-foot horse and I. 

The morn burst red, a gory wound, 
O'er iron hills and savage ground, 
And there was never another sound 
Save the beat of my horse's hoofs. 

Unto the murderer's ear they said : 
"Thou'rt of the dead! — thou'rt of the dead!' : 
Still on his stallion black he fled 
With death on his path behind. 

Fiery dust from the blasted plain 
Burnt like lava in every vein, 
But I rode on with a steady rein, 
Though the fierce sand-devils spun. 

97 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Then to a sullen land we came, 
Whose earth was brass, whose sky was flame; 
I made it balm with her blessed name 
In the Land of Mexico. 

With gasp and groan my poor horse fell — 
Last of all things that loved me well! 
I turned my head — a smoking shell 
Veiled me his dying throes. 

But fast on vengeful foot was I; 
His steed fell, too, and was left to die; 
He fled where a river's channel dry 
Made way to the rolling stream. 

Red as my rage the huge sun sank; 
My foe bent low on the river's bank 
And deep of the kindly flood he drank, 
While the giant stars broke forth. 

Then face to face and man to man, 
I fought him where the river ran, 
Where the trembling palm held up its fan 
And the emerald serpents lay. 

X 98 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



The mad, remorseless bullets broke 
From tongues of flame in the sulphur-smoke; 
The air was rent till the desert spoke 
To the echoing hills afar. 

Hot from his lips the curses burst; — 
He fell! — the sands were slaked of thirst; 
A stream in the stream ran dark at first, 
And the stones grew red as hearts. 

I shot him where the Rio flows; 
I shot him when the moon arose, 
And where he lies the vulture knows 
Along the Tinto River. 

But where she lies, to none is known, 
Save my poor heart and a lonely stone 
On which I sit and weep alone 
Where the cactus-stars are white. 

Where / shall lie no man shall say, 
The flowers all are fallen away; 
The desert is so drear and gray, 
O Mary of Milrone! 

99 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



HEIGHTS AND DEPTHS 

Nature once heaved her mountains' heads aloft, 
So we, her children, might on them respire 
Her airs serene and pure, immune from mire 

Of valleys and their highways trodden soft 
By herds oblivious to the stars and skies 
And the white heights of yearning. Haughty 

peaks, 
Oh, he alone shall mount you, he who seeks, 

August with anger, from dark roads to rise. 



ARCHITEKTON 

Let us be Master-builders — not alone 
Builders, but Masters let us strive to be, 
And raise our temples to Futurity 

In spirit as in everlasting stone. 

Creators true to mind, may still the soul 
Of Beauty rule us and our fanes erect ! — 
A sovereign Artist is the Architect 

And Master of the Dream-inspired Whole. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 

Upon the peaks of his proud labor flares 

Not yet the light that charms the myriad eye ; 

Serene they pierce Time's undivulgent airs 
And bide their dawn from out a younger sky, 



Till some revealing orb shall heave its spears 
And loose the lips enchanted in the stone — 

Then shall old ruins topple, and all ears 
Of Earth be startled with a thunder tone. 



The voice of Zarathustra from the crag 

Shall ring o'er regions red with human rust; 

From their embattled walls his word shall drag 
Eidolons grim of epochs gray with dust. 



But now the clouds immerse the Titan — hark! 

His iron footsteps and their echoes vast 
Crashing across the Age's cloistered dark 

And trampling down the gods that held the 
Past! 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN 

(A new Translation from Goethe's Faust) 

The Lord. The Heavenly Legions, then 

Mephistopheles. 

The Three Archangels advance. 

RAPHAEL: 

In olden wise the sun is blending 

With brother-spheres his rival song, 
And now with thunder-tread is ending 

His predetermined journey long. 
His aspect gives the angels power, 

Though none his secret fathom may, 
The mystic orbs of splendor shower 

Their light as on the primal day. 

GABRIEL: 

And swift with swiftness unabating, 
The Earth revolves her glory bright, — 

EJysian lustre alternating 

With deep and terror-mantled night. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



The ocean foams in broadest surges 
And up the towering cliffs it rears, 

And cliffs and seas sweep on where urges 
The swift, eternal flight of spheres. 



MICHAEL: 

And tempests roaring and contending 

From sea to land, from land to sea, 
Weave, in their rage, a chain expending 

Afar its potent empery. 
The path before the thunder clearing, 

Now flashing desolations play, — 
Yet here Thy servants, Lord, revering 

The mild mutations of Thy day. 



THE THREE: 

The vision gives the angels power, 
Since none Thy being fathom may, 

And all Thy orbs of splendor shower 
Their light as on the primal day. 



103 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



A DEDICATION 

Mundane Muse — White Lady Mine! 
Take this tribute, wholly thine; 
Take this sheaf of morning song, — 

It is all the Past can give; 
My fairer, richer fields belong 

To thee — and I must live 
To bind their harvest wealth and lay 

It safe from burning and from blight, 
Before thy feet while it is day 

And day is golden in our sight ; 
While leaping Time still laughs with us, 
And young Earth blooms miraculous, 
And Life is watered with the spring 

That bids me labor still and sing. 



THE QUEST AT END 

In white light of the day-star 
Darting down its ardent beams,- 

Till the white became a gray star, 
I walked within my dreams. 

104 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



In haunting of the moonlight 

Shaking all its silver staves, 
I sought a ghost within the night 

By old forgotten graves. 

' Neath roadways of the giant 

Solar zones enlaced as one, 
Where seed of suns and gyrant 

Fogs of fire teemed and spun. 

By pale and astral powers 

Calling on a spirit blest, 
'Mid ashen tombs and towers, 

I wandered on my quest. 

By comet-flame I wandered 

Where it plunged with glaring shroud,- 
The winged years I squandered 

And cried a name aloud. 



Never Night nor her rolling, 
Argent lusters o'er my head, 

Nor my thin voice, nor the tolling 
Of bells awoke my dead. 

105 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Then fans of dawn-glow fired 
The clouds to golden spume; — 

Mine eyes in gloom expired, 
In massy deeps of gloom. 

In the dew on a lowly 

Mound of grass I fell a-swoon, 
All my senses lulled in holy 

Veils with Lethe-waters strewn. 

I wakened when a twilight 

Burned along its reach of flame ; 

My lips lay on a flower bright — 
And that flower bore her name. 

BIANCA 

Bianca ! Bianca ! 
Thine eyes are like a Sybil's eyes, 

For they are molten with the night -, 

They hold a strange, sequestered light 
That to some golden future flies 

From out some golden past; 

Yea, they are overcast — 
Bianca ! 
With mystery and stellar sheen, 
Liquescent, calm and vespertine! 

106 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Bianca ! Bianca ! 
Thy mouth is like a muse's mouth 

Of coral to a flageolet — 

A chanting muse whose lips are wet 
With nectar never knowing drouth, 

And when, immersed in dreams, 

Their music stifled seems, 
Bianca ! 
They make a living lute that hoards 
Old memories in its silent chords. 

Bianca ! Bianca ! 
Shouldst thou unleash thy trammeled hair, 

And crown thee with a myrtle crown, 

And sable torrents rushing down, 
Blot ivory shoulders warm and bare, 

Lo! pipes of Pan would call 

Thee to his festival, 
Bianca ! 
And thou wouldst dance away and leave 
The saddened world and me to grieve. 



107 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE MOON DAMOZEL 

The moon her silver sickle lifts 

As though to shear the phantom thread 
That binds the live world to the dead, 
Yvonne ! 
See, through the rifts 
Of plunging clouds she darts and drifts — 
Yvonne! O Yvonne! 

She haunts and hounds us through the grove; 
Thou lingerest, thou growest cold; 
Thou growest strangely still and old, 
Yvonne ! 
Thine eyeballs rove. 
What demon comes to plague thee, love? 
Yvonne! O Yvonne! 

Thy face grows stone like yonder sphere 
Of ghostly ashes, dust and death. 
Thy breath is not a mortal's breath, 
Yvonne ! 
Thine eyes no tear 
Unloose — thou starest nor dost hear, 
Yvonne! O Yvonne! 

108 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



On the cold, blasted orb thine eyes 
Glare petrified with awful power : 
Alas! for us this is the hour, 
Yvonne ! 
That our love dies. 
The living sink, — the dead arise, 
Yvonne! O Yvonne! 

Go, spirit, seek thy planet dread ; 
The slavery of thy spells is past, 
The dim, sad sphere is overcast, 
Yvonne ! 
And on thy head 
And mine, Love's blooms droop sere and dead, 
Yvonne! O Yvonne! 



109 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



RUSSIA AGONISED 

MCMV 

Unhappy land! thy heavens with horrors hung, 
Reveal no promise of a day ; thy plains 
Shake in each grassy blade rebellious swords 
Sprung from the mad root of Revolt; thy peaks 
In protest cry more awful than the tongues 
Of seers on winds of ashen yestermorns. 
Thy cities scream in blood, and on their domes 
Of empire glares red desolating light [seas 

Launched from the pyres of doom. Thy stained 
Roll dark to Death's horizons and are thronged 
With hostile apparitions vast with ruin, 
And Havoc riots 'round thy wintry walls. 
So fated fell, since fated long to fall, [sides 

Thy wave-borne armaments, though close their 
Compassed with flame, armored and reinforced 
With triple steel and round with thunders ringed, 
Yet futile flashed their bolts, by hands enslaved 
Directed on their resolute enemy. 

Low lie thy citadels impregnable [stones 

That seemed, and so had been, were all their 
Buttressed by freemen's hearts and not by hands 
Of bondmen, were not ravelins and redoubts, 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Or glutted guns or swords their sole defense, 
But Liberty's great Word — that power which 
Of every heart a host, of every host [makes 

Unconquered multitudes thrice multiplied. 

How still on Asian wastes thine armies rest, 

O Russia ! In those alien fields afar 

What sleep lies on those legions harnessed once 

In pomp and panoply of battle ! Spurred 

With warlike hauteur huge, they spread athwart 

The trampled leagues in fluttering shadows cast 

From banners burning terribly with wrath 

And pallid flames of swords! They seemed wide 

Of clashing corn, stalwart beneath the sun [fields 

And valiant in the shade of trees. Then sank 

Destruction and the air was wild with wings 

Of liberated lives and wet the ground 

With many rains of red that on Death's couch 

Lay heavy. Now the might of Muscovy 

Cumbers the richening sod whose delving worm 

Holds revels on its pride. And the great sun 

Sends salvoes of his beams athwart those plains, 

Saluting peace, when his recurrent morns 

On desolation burst. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



If yet with arms 
Resistance seek revenge, or if defeat 
Piled on defeat no counsel lend, if pride 
Clear paths for massacre, or folly throw 
The sanguine ports to slaughter open wide 
In the Manchurian lands, — if in these things 
Declared, no wiser word for thee is carved 
Full on thy brow, O broken government, 
Then art thou wholly doomed. Doomed though 

the sands 
Of Volga were outnumbered by the lives 
That wait in hecatombs on sacrifice 
Yet minish never, — doomed though Ural's peaks 
Turned giants and for thee bestrode those zones 
Thou covetest, and doubly doomed though all 
Thy coasts were adamant with treasure massed, 
And gold thy long-drawn shores. So tyranny 
Is weakest still in that whereon her might 
She bases, and the brands her vassals wield 
Are rushes to her foes, but steel to her. 

Full to thy front thy children rise, and dread 
And holy is the wrath that masters them, 
By angels urged, — wrath that shall master thee, 
Albeit the pavements of thy capitols 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Are faint beneath their slaughtered, and the snows 
Of far Siberian wastes engulf thy sons. [chill, 
Though woeful whips and chains and dungeons 
Or midnights of infernal mines thine arms 
Remorseless be, vain is their service dire ! 
Though veiled and ikon-guarded shrines a-gloom 
With superstition and the blinding craft 
Of priests may over despotism cast 
Anointing oils divine and bless with breath 
Of sanctity its abhorrent head and brow, 
Black with a nation's woe, yet is its fall 
Announced in terror's thunders now unpent 
In yon red heavens with awful scriptures stamped. 
There floods of marshalled doom brim down the 
Enwombing ills unknown. [skies 

Awry thy pomp 
On its marmorean pillars leans, while Fear 
Feeds on thy palace walls and, shaking, hears 
Thy millions muttering on all the winds. 
The generation's surges take on crests 
And whiten, by no captaincy controlled, 
By age-gray wrong aroused, by misery scourged, 
To madness. Lo, they mount to overwhelm 
With wrath, the thrones of Tyranny upreared 

113 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



On bases steep with clamor and in blood 
Submerged and tears that only blood can quell. 
The sum of crescent ages hath annulled 
With light thy iron barriers set with hate 
Within Progression's path, hath raised from 
More humane than thy laws, the incubus [hearts 
Of night thy hands imposed, O riven realm. 

Yet bright as standards waving in thy North, 

Whose glory stirs the snows with vagrant fire, 

So yet for thee, to wisdom reconciled, 

The flames of torn Odessa may be dawn 

Of greatness that builds not on leagues of land, 

But always on that Liberty whose star 

Is safeguard of all empire. So erect 

Thy state upon humanity, so lay 

Its fundaments in Freedom, its defense 

In men's enfranchised hands that never foe 

Nor age shall gnaw its fabric into dust. 

From shallows and dark shoals of adverse fate, 

Tremendous with thy loss, may fountains spring 

Of good, thee not alone, but all mankind 

To quicken and refreshen. May that thought 

Which hath thy glory been if not thy guide, 

Still shoot new fibres through the families 

Of men and bind as brothers many a race 

114 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Extended to the dwindling margins dim 
Of the green world. So shall thy virile veins, 
All inexhaustibly regenerate, 
Flow on till Life's defoliated tree 
Trembles with all its ultimate bright fruit, 
The seraph's heritage, the gods' great dower, 
Unending Peace, Earth's bridal-kiss with Time. 

SOULS OF MEN ASUNDER 

Chill the poisoned winds and dank that o'er the 
world are blowing, 
Shake with frost a breast that feels thy breath 
in all. 
Evermore shall friendship's singing streams be- 
tween us flowing, 
Once with love and laughter golden, run with 
gall. 

Long to me shall now, alas, the grieving surge 
of Ocean 
Drone with lonely tides lamenting on this 
shore, — 
'Mid that wreck of hearts and dreams and shells 
of dead emotion, 
Where those pearls we gathered? gathered 
now no more. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Fair our habitation shone, with mouths of music 
fluent, 
Pure of love created, o'er the stormy coasts ; 
Hollow lies the house and all its melody fled 
truant ; 
Chambers hiss with adders, windows gleam 
with ghosts. 

Stars have burst while vast in thirst the reddened 
leagues lay parching; 
Realms have sunk, and torn with tears were 
nations' eyes; 
Armies flamed and perished while their glory 
kept on marching, 
Yet the faith we held it died not, — now it dies. 

Wider than the world is — wearier than the floods 
that sunder, 
Fall our paths apart on Earth nor meet again. 
Old and cold the legend and its end is woe and 
wonder, 
Havoc's heel in hearts, and dust of Death, and 
Pain. 



116 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



HOW COULD MEN HATE THEE, 
LUCIFER? 

Son of the Morning, thou whose arm erects 

Full o'er yon Orient wastes thy towering torch, 

A pharos guiding argosies of dawn 

Up through the ruins of the night, — we mark 

Athwart the plinths of Heaven implacable, 

Thy seraph head unbowed ! Unbowed thy form, 

In glimmering outline traced and phosphor glow, 

Beneath its burthen of damnation thrones 

Full on Earth's proudest peak, nor yet thy feet — 

Worn feet ! that toil o'er planetary ways, 

Kiss of that Earth disdain, so loved by thee. 

How could men hate thee, Lucifer? Not thee 

Rash coals of wrath unquenchable impelled 

To huge rebellion, but solicitude 

And charitable intent unto man. 

What could deter thee from thy task benign, 

O Bearer of the Light, though on thy head 

Exile fell heaped and iron punishment, 

Loss of the olden bliss and sorrowful doom? 

Foe wast thou but to Night and Ignorance ; 

Thy ray rent all their palls, their curtains torn 

Sank cowering in collapse, and man rose free 

117 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



To shrine in temples of the intellect 

Th' untrammeled thought. Fear lived no more 

When frailty fell ! Far nobler fate to err 

In freedom's light supreme than doubt or pray 

In charmed darkness. Thou, O Lucifer, 

Art figure less of Evil than of Sorrow, 

Nor bearest Light alone, but Love also, 

Since both, co-ordinate with good in thee, 

Not in their essences contend but one 

Are and inseparate remain. So one 

With thee in nature and in glory's crown, 

Thy mortal sons, nor less their doom decreed 

Than thine, those beacon-bearers through the 

When massy and cohorted Ignorance [glooms, 

Sat battlemented by dark books and turned 

The iron leaves with crimson fingers dipt 

In cores of starry lives. Victorious long, 

These minions of the midnight and the dusk, 

Ere shattered by the illuminating lance 

That on their numberless proud summits fell. 

Like thee thy sons first taught that brains could 

beam 
And spirit shine, and built of ashlars up 
The dawn-tipt turrets and pavilions bright 
Whereon burnt cresset-fires for Pioneers 

118 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Of Light their thankless labors to illume. 
For thankless, thankless still, O Lucifer, 
The labors of the Light, with hatred paid, 
With pain, with persecution paved along 
Their dolor's path, with thorns, with hunger's 

teeth, 
With flints of shame, with death and frenzied 

fires 
Insatiably fed, with swords and gyves 
Laid on the limbs of pale, tormented Truth, 
And dungeon-dusks to overwhelm her ray 
That cannot die. Ever such fate hath fallen 
On spirits lustre-fraught, since first deposed 
From noons of state ineffable in Heaven, 
'Mid acmes rapt of archangelic awe, 
The skies precipitous absorbed thy plunge 
Immense that down the empyrean lay. 
Calcined to ash, Heaven's zones burned bright 

with thee, 
Till in this nether dome lay terminate 
Thy course and whelmed the lords of dawn's 

domain 
Where thou in vast magnificence art now 
Throned Monarch of the Morning. 

119 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



What of him, 
Titan of noblest heart, of fable old, 
Prometheus, who on stormy Caucasus, 
Lies o'er bleak leagues of granite, fast in chains 
By Hermes forged remorseless, and endures 
Intolerable torment and the bird 
Of dreadful beak? Though long the winters 

white 
Build up their emerald and crystal walls 
With guards of glassy spears, though skies of 

slate 
Pile snows on snows upon him, till his form 
Marks eminences strange along the peaks 
Of that wild range, or suns their malice dart 
Through the insufferable summers on his flesh 
Exposed, yet never the harsh, arid airs 
Lift up his plaint to Jove — no* wail, no plaint 
Ascends, the exulting tyrant to appease. 
But oft his agony's red couch, though big 
With sufferings ultimate, grows strangely soft, — 
Then, lo, the heartless stones start into flowers 
Of clasping petals pure, enstarred with dew, 
While the exhaling rose upon his wounds 
Breathes balms and essences of sighs. He smiles 
Upon the dreams that men, his children, joy, — 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Fruit of his travail consummate, though paid 
By him with many a pang. So mounts his thought 
Triumphant and his wan face wings a smile 
Up to the thunder's throne and looming Zeus. 

How could men hate thee, though the gods do 

hate? 
Remote in distance and on heights remote 
Dwell they who thence deliver unto man 
Lumens of soul, since ever Light must seek, 
Or ineffectual its radiance falls, 
The solitude of peaks exalt and chill, 
Where thrones aerial lift and fence their calms 
With silence from the Earth-enveloping winds 
That there may never war. 

Bearers of Light 
Immortal, even ye who higher climb 
The Earthen eminence than those you bless 
With glorious gift, none other lot await, 
None other meed than Lucifer's or doom 
Of the bold, fettered Titan. Isolate 
In unsurrender of your souls, immune 
From injury on far heights of soaring thought 
Piled firm, and 'mid incomparable climes 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Of contemplation fixed, yet may you smile 
Unshaken in serenity that holds 
Not change, nor joy, nor suffering. Yet it holds 
A sadness like the sea's or his who casts 
About him oft the mourning of the clouds 
With all their tears, that deeper grief to hide 
From which shall nevermore exempted be 
All dreamers and all souls whose sovereign sight 
Is lustre undefeated, though new dawns 
Drown in their cumulative floods the beams, 
No less eternal, of each vanward star. 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE IRON VIRGIN 

(In the Five-Corner ed Tower at Nuremberg) 

A Satire 

"Here," cried the Keeper's daughter, "here she 
stands — 

The Iron Virgin in the dungeon-gloom; 
Mark her sweet, placid smile, — you see, no hands 

Hath she to tear her victims to their doom, 
But she hath handles/' — here she opened wide 

The hellish engine on its hinges old 
That groaned as once the wretches groaned in- 
side, — 

And all my leaping blood stood stricken cold. 
"These are the spikes that entered at the eyes 

Where entered light no more, — this one with 
rust 
Corroded, pierced the bursting throat whose cries 

Soared to the sobbing angels, let us trust. 
And those that sank into the breast are three; — 

(Observe they miss the heart) — these four the 
veins 
Transfixed, and lest that death too sudden be, 

Slowly they closed the hollow shell with chains. 

123 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



When all at length was still and blood unstopt 

From the remorseless iron ran and wept, 
Sheer on great, mangling knives the body dropt 
And shooting streams the fragments downward 
swept 
Low to the river, — and nor man nor place 

Knew more of them who knew the Maid's 
embrace." 

More cruel this Virgin than the Sirens three 

Or the devouring Sphinx whose lips were 
stained 
With lives of men, — and yet it seems to me 

The crudest of the cruel have remained. 
For we have many virgins, nor are they, 

Nor is their virtue formed of iron quite; 
They smile as sweetly and they smile alway, 

And they have hands — a left one and a right. 
Yea, hands have they — "how happy if we mote 

Into the arms of woman straightway fall 
Sans need to fall into her hands !" — so wrote 

He who is greatest, wittiest of all 
The living wits. The Jungfrau's red caress 

Was terrible — and yet she granted death, 
But these our virgins are more pitiless, — 

With them the mangled victim keeps his breath. 
124 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



His eyes they poniard till the wretch crawls blind, 
- Within his throat his fluttering tongue they 

nail, 
And through his breast a hundred irons grind 

Their way from fairest hands that never fail 
To strike the heart. They break it, and then tear 

With pearly teeth his body into bands. 
(True, what a blessing to poor man it were 

Might woman be divested of her hands. ) 
No river hides his tortured flesh, but he 

Is scourged into the world all bitter-bright, — 
There ridicule heaps high his agony, 

And leaves him naked to the winds and night, 
To die a thousand times — a thousand times 

This passion and this cold embrace to feel 
Of these automata, these iron mimes, 

These shells malevolent of brass or steel, 
These empty figures fair that know no sin 

And are all smiles without and cruelty within. 



There hung this crushing humor in the air, 
As from the Five-Coigned Tower swift I fled. 

Peace bide with thee, my brother, — O beware 
All virgins — living, moribund or dead! 

125 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE LAND OF ALABASTER 

The sunset burned across the shackled clouds, 
A bar of tyrannous and angry red; 

The solar king, wrapped gloomily in shrouds, 
Drew sackcloth o'er his old and humbled head. 



Gaunt stood the trees o'er meadows paved with 
snow ; 

Their shadows crept like ghosts begot of light 
And perished where the smouldering winter glow 

Made way for dense invasions of the night. 



So hewn in alabaster lie the hills ; 

The victor flakes upon the roofs and rocks 
Shine wonderful. Now tinkling music fills 

This land of snow and silence as the flocks 



Creep homeward o'er the mute marmoreal palls 
Unbroken and immense that stretch and gleam ; 

The blue smoke towers o'er the roofs, then falls 
The hand of Conqueror Night upon the dream. 

126 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE FORGING OF THE RINGS 

An Epithalamium 

Eros am I! Created things 

I melt, I shape with flaming wings. 

So steel, though stubborned stiff with fire, 

Trembles, glows, and feels desire; 

So ice upon the water's breast 

Roars, and rends its armored rest, 

And bronzen shapes of gods, or men 

Of marble flush to flesh as when 

Stones from out Deukalion's hands 

Sprang to young and lusty bands, 

New and naked in the light, 
Or Music reared on Theban sands 

Tall fanes all wondrous white. 
Kinglier might than kings I hold ; 

Creation's primal cause 

Lies graven in my laws, 
And this green, tiny world I fold 

Close with wings of Day and Dark — 
I, who am Nature's Hierarch. 

Light was Chaos' pristine smile; 
I was Chaos' pristine song; 
127 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Her globes liquescent quickened while 

I goaded them along. 
Oceans are but slaves to moons; 

Moons to worlds are vassals bound ; 

Worlds must follow suns around 
To my all-compellant tunes 
Spun from undeciphered runes. 

Flame! myriads of millions 

Of suns beyond the scope of suns ! 

Mine the power that links them, mine 

Their fire, and mine the splendor 
Of giant spheres that shine, 

Male in magnificence, 

On swooning moons whose tender 

Frail glow is recompense 
For light their virgin fields absorb 
From each enormous master-orb. 
These subject to my will I hold, 
Controlling who am uncontrolled 

Through all the hours ; — 

Of all the powers 
Remaining youngest of the young, 
Yet oldest of the old. 

The myth from Hellas sprung, 

128 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Decked me with name of Eros — name 

That holds my earthly fame alone 
But not my cosmic fame, 

Refulgent to a farther zone. 

My fateful anvil throws 

Its ruby o'er the stars ; 
There forge I joys and woes, 

And love that makes or mars. 
Music smitten from the steel, 
Floats in many a waving wheel, 

Which, strong and clear, 

Gods only hear, 
And mortals only feel. 
So speeds the forging of the rings : — 
Love, singing, swiftly smites the gold, and smit- 
ing, sweetly sings : 

Gold in beauty's glamour rolled! 
Light of loveliness, unfold! 
Small, smiling sun, yet glorious, re-risen, 

Delivered unto day from rock-ribbed gloom, 
Over what vales victorious? what prison, 

Gold of the gentle glow, — what mountain's 
womb 

129 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Of clustered spars, 
Or crystal bars 
Coffined thy rays in clasping ore? 
Till some sharp bolt, in thunder sent, 
The startled crypts in sunder rent 
And double day within thy cavern bore? 
Fair fruit of Earth, for human fate, 
Bright emblems of eternity 
Shall be fashioned out of thee. 
Nor curse of coin, nor csesar's crowns, nor tires 
of state. 



Let percussive hammers mould 

Thee to circlets twain, O gold. 

Impassioned, yielding metal, far too mellow, 

In thee a strain of iron must be bound, 
A silvern flux must settle as its fellow, 

And strength with purity as one compound. 
So twain and twin, 
The rings begin 
To scatter light upon the wind, 
And murmur forth a golden note 
That wizards sere and olden mote 
Have woven from the mystic airs of Ind 
To lash a seraph's heart aflame 

130 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Once, once to taste an earthly kiss! 
With promised pregnancies of bliss 
The heavenly hoops lie done and seize a fairer 
name. 

Gleaming rings of Wedlock, great 
With love, with mystery, with fate! 
In you what hope from mortal vision hidden, 

Hints of long generations yet to grow 
From two who at Love's portal stand unbidden, 
Led by the fairest dream the heart can know? 
And though malign 
Or blest the sign 
That burns in prophet-flame above, 
With bliss or woe for distant days, 
Think but of the insistent lays 
From hearts athrob with pulsing harps of Love. 
From tabernacled lamps a ray 
Falls far where unborn spirits shine 
Beyond the years — an endless line, 
Beyond the all-crowning kiss — beyond the nup- 
tial day. 

Servant cirques that Life ordains 

For links in its successive chains, 

131 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Binding with bands eternal, man and woman, 

So that two destinies know but one path, 
And all that is supernal or is human, 

On Earth a two-fold day and duty hath, — 
Ye aureate rounds 
Ye span the bounds 
'Twixt soul and clay, 'twixt hearts and hands, 
And purify with finer flame, 
And bless with a diviner name 
The impulse and the law that naught with- 
stands ; — 
Ye lay on Passion spells of Peace, 
And are its riches and reward 
Which swords of seraphim must guard 
From hungry Time's annulling rage that bans the 
world's increase. 

Hark ! the melody that clinks 
Pure from those portentous links! 
It darts within the elements rejoicing, 

It trembles in the throats of thrilling bells, 
Whose tongues, soon stirred to eloquence, are 
voicing 
O'er flights of clouds, the happiness that wells, 
And rolling mounts 
From raptured founts 
132 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Of wine within each leaping heart 

Whose floods with dyes of gladness glow 
Till they a noble madness know, 
While Fancy snares the brain with siren art. 
Burn, happy, happy day thy light 

In azure o'er this hallowed pair! 
For two so young, for two so fair, 
O lend thy smile to Even, O lend thy joy to 
Night. 



But another note ye own, 
Rings, of harsh, repellant tone, 
Like iron struck to clamorous outcrying; 

Then both your burnished bands grow tyrant 
chains, 
Your soft'ning song, your amorous deep sighing 
Are dumb with rusten dolors and sore pains. 
For cursed they 
Who burn away 
With lust or strife your mild alloy, — 
Reverting unto mordant gyves, 
You gnaw their waste discordant lives 
And canker all the yearning rose of Joy. 
You fetter heart, you fetter soul, 

i33 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



You fling a venom on the air, 
And Misery, mute in marble there, 
Hath Age for its ally and Ruin for its goal! 



O ye whose warm, responsive hands 
Lock with those from shadow-lands 
Beyond Night's moors or meadows of the morn- 
ing, 
'Twixt dead and unborn races intervene 
On litten heights your shadows, Life adorning 
Where noon-tide parts the seeing and unseen. 
A race shall rise 
'Neath future skies 
From flames that bloom within your breasts ; 
For you who pause on Aidenn's hills 
A moment ere this cadence stills, 
And Earth once more grows gray before her 
guests, 
Are stones of Atlantean piles 

Advancing tribes rear over Death, 
Bequeathing mind and blood and breath. 
Where fast o'er Time's destroying sea, Love lifts 
his shining isles. 



134 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



THE STORM-NIGHT 

All the moonless night the strong 
Hissing levins lanced the steeps, 

And the throats of thunder long 
Bellowed o'er the smoking deeps 

Whence the shaggy crags were rent 

As the storm their forests bent, 
Like the crowns of kings in woe. 

Black I saw the charging cloud 
Fraught with fire against the peak, 

Saw it wrecked with tumult loud, 
Loosing all its bolts to wreak 

Vengeance on the gulfs inane, 

But its flashing brands in vain 

Plunged and blazed within the pit. 

Overhead with hollow roar, 

Rolled the mangled wastes of night, 
Filled with voices rude that tore 

Down the firmamental height 
To the Earth a sullen path 
For the waters launched in wrath 

And the winds. All winds were there ! 

i35 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



Yea, the winds on giant reeds 

Blew, and called the cliffs to come 

With the whirlwinds on their steeds 
To this Pandemonium. 

How their hulks heaved in the dark! 

Like the Flood beneath the Ark, 
To an organ-octave vast. 

Bowed my heart unto their thrill, 
And my lips were loosed to shout, 

I grew brother to the hill 

And the storm-shape's whirling rout. 

So, on tides of thunder tost, 

I, immersed in strife and lost, 
Joyed the elemental war! 

Then mine arms invoked profounds 
Where swart demons of the dark 

Shaped me gods from sights and sounds, 
Till great Peace, the Hierarch, 

From his throne called unto Dis 

Brooding o'er the mad abyss, 
And my pagan soul grew still. 

Sank the winds. Each phalanx grim 
Of the battling clouds withdrew, 



LOOMS OF LIFE 



And the cloven peaks that dim 

Fret the shores of pendant blue, 
Through the smiling world upsoared 
While the lingering stars adored 
Morn in majesty revealed. 

Soon the new-born ray of Dawn 
Burnt upon the Orient range, 

And my yearning soul was drawn 
To my brethren, mute and strange. 

Through the pure and vibrant air 

Mountant sprang the solar flare 
As the birds and blooms awoke. 

Then to lower vales of light 

And the homes and hearts of men, 

Burnt my footsteps swift and bright 
Down the mountain and the glen. 

So I left the heights above, 

Longing for the warmer love 
Lying on a woman's lips. 



137 



JUL 9 WO 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

imnnim 

018 407 680 9 



